Psychological stress

In psychology, stress is a feeling of strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays a factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, may lead to bodily harm. Stress can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental illnesses such as depression. In psychology, stress is a feeling of strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays a factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, may lead to bodily harm. Stress can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental illnesses such as depression. Stress can be external and related to the environment, but may also be caused by internal perceptions that cause an individual to experience anxiety or other negative emotions surrounding a situation, such as pressure, discomfort, etc., which they then deem stressful. Humans experience stress, or perceive things as threatening, when they do not believe that their resources for coping with obstacles (stimuli, people, situations, etc.) are enough for what the circumstances demand. When people think the demands being placed on them exceed their ability to cope, they then perceive stress. A very much overlooked side of stress is its positive adaptations. Positive psychological stress can lead to motivation and challenge instead of anxiety. The effects of experiencing eustress, which is positive stress, versus distress, defined as negative stress, are significant. While colloquially lumped together, the various types of stress should be treated as separate concepts. Selye (1974) proposed four variations of stress. On one axis he locates good stress (eustress) and bad stress (distress). On the other is over-stress (hyperstress) and understress (hypostress). Selye advocates balancing these: the ultimate goal would be to balance hyperstress and hypostress perfectly and have as much eustress as possible. Stress is extremely useful for a productive lifestyle because it makes working enjoyable instead of a chore, as seen with distress. The term 'eustress' comes from the Greek root eu- which means 'good' (as in 'euphoria'). Eustress results when a person perceives a stressor as positive.'Distress' stems from the Latin root dis- (as in 'dissonance' or 'disagreement'). Medically defined distress is a threat to the quality of life. It occurs when a demand vastly exceeds a person's capabilities. Prior to the introduction of the concept 'stress' in the psychological sense c. 1955,people already identified a range of more nuanced ideas to describe and confront such emotions as worry, grief, concern, obsession, fear, annoyance, anxiety, distress, suffering and passion. 'Stress' has subsequently become a mainstay of pop psychology. Stress is a non-specific response. It is neutral, and what varies is the degree of response. It is all about the context of the individual and how they perceive the situation. Selye defined stress as “the nonspecific (that is, common) result of any demand upon the body, be the effect mental or somatic.” This includes the medical definition of stress as a physical demand and the colloquial definition of stress as a psychological demand. A stressor is inherently neutral meaning that the same stressor can cause either distress or eustress. It is individual differences and responses that induce either distress or eustress. A stressor is any event, experience, or environmental stimulus that causes stress in an individual. These events or experiences are perceived as threats or challenges to the individual and can be either physical or psychological. Researchers have found that stressors can make individuals more prone to both physical and psychological problems, including heart disease and anxiety.